Who I am

Pierre Pallez, originally from France, now living in Switzerland.
I caught the photo virus when I was 10, and it never went away since. I am self-taught, and keep on learning, every day. I have attended Broncolor creative lighting classes, and many other workshops in France, Switzerland, and the US.
More info about me and photography in this Interview.

I'm a curious person, and I like discovering new things. I like travelling a lot too.

I guess my main interests at the moment are probably portraits, travel photography, nature.
I don't pretend to be an artist - an artist has a message, or a distinctive style, or both. I don't. All I'm doing is try to make images that represent what I feel, and give my own version of reality as I saw it. As a former musician, I believe feeling is more important than raw technique, or what the latest fad is.

Congrats to those who read up to here - I hope you enjoy my images.

Gear

From time to time, I get questions about what gear I'm using. Here's a summary of what I answer : "Gear is not important. What matters is what you can do with what you've got. Ask yourself - will purchasing a 500$ frying pan make you a better cook ?"

Now that we got that settled, I use gear from Nikon, Elinchrom, Gitzo, Pocket wizard, SanDisk, Corsair, and Apple. I use Lightroom and Photoshop.

Images

Please don't steal my images. I spend a lot of time making them, and they're all copyrighted. If you'd like to use them, or would like information about licensing them, or want to commission me, feel free to get in touch with me.

Keep in touch

You can stay informed about the updates of this blog by subscribing to my RSS feed, or receive new posts by email. You can also join me on Facebook.

Featured

I had two panoramic images selected at the international epson pano awards 2011.

I have won dozens of noteworthies and other chocolate medals at photofriday.com and other assorted online competitions. Always nice to win, even if I don't keep tabs on those. Thanks to the people who voted for my images :)

I managed to find myself at one of the very few spots where the total solar eclipse was visible in the Faroé Islands. The spot was close to the sea on the island of Vagar, in a little village called Sandavagur. After more than an hour in the rain and strong wind, the clouds finally opened up during totality, enough time for me to make those photos and enjoy the spectacle.

Pentax 645Z medium format, 400mm lens

Leica M, 50mm summilux lens. A friend mentioned that the cloud under the sun actually resembles a polar bear. If you look carefully, it quite does, so I named this image “Ursa Major”.

So Prez Obama is visiting Burma, right now. He’s going to meet Thein Sein, the president.
He might also meet this guy, one of the two VPs, whom I shot earlier in January in a remote area:

Let me tell you a quick story about that one. This was shot in Nagaland, near the indian border, which is a “brown zone” which few people do visit.
Access is granted by authorities to groups, not individuals. Only company that’s allowed to take you there is government-owned (which I didn’t know).
So I joined a group that was going there for 5 days for the new year celebrations. The program was extremely vague, the organisation was real flaky, and I didn’t know what to expect before I ended up in Leshi.

Once there, I learned that some fo the Government’s big cheeses would come to attend the celebration. Cool beans, I thought – I came to photograph the local people, not anything else.

So the VP, some ministers and other apparatchiks flew in in army helicopters, people from the local tribes were more or less lined up to sing and dance.

There was a lot of military personnel, police, and TV crews to cover all that.

And they were really interested in us, those TV crews.
Most of us foreigners got interviewed and were given seats in the VIP tribune and were greeted by the authorities, VP included.

It became obvious that it was all a big PR show, so I stopped covering the event and went back to shoot the local tribe people inst

ead, it was way more interesting and that’s why I went there anyway.

The whole thing was big news on burmese TV, we discovered that later on as we saw ourselves on TV when we got back to “civilization” (as in: stranded in a place that has a bar with a TV set). The takeaway message from TV news was “look at that, we’re opening up and making good progress on reform.. even in really remote areas, the tourists are free to come here, etc”.
Well… free, my arse. We were essentially locked up in a village.

A friend and I tried to go visit another village than the one we were parked into. No way. The whole area was blocked by the army, from which we wouldn’t get clearance.
We tried to arrange two motorcycles and drivers to sneak through the net and go visit nearby villages, but it became clear that it was not really worth taking the risk of getting in trouble with the authorities in this part of the world.
So much for the evening news’ PR message.

Still with me?
The point is this: It’s great that Obama is visiting the country. The lady is now free, and it’s true that Burma is opening up. Great news, especially for business people.
But please, whenever Burmese authorities say they are taking big steps toward more freedom, take it with a pinch of salt. I hate to be a party pooper, but…
Things are improving, of course, but an awful lot remains to be done, especially when it comes to the people themselves.
How about the borders? How about the Brown and Black zones, the ones that are under control of the army to various degrees?
How about all those political prisoners?
How about the Rohingya and other minorities?
What’s going on in Kachin, Karen, and Rakhine states? In the golden triangle?
How is “reform” affecting the lives of ordinary people?
I’m sure president O will not only go there for Realpolitik and drop a few business cards, and will ask those questions too. Or not.

I’m selling my trusty D3S, revised by Nikon Switzerland.
I take care of my equipment, but I also shoot pictures, I’m not a collector. So it has some scuffs and a few little scars, but is in great condition.
Comes complete with its original box and an extra battery.
If you are interested in such a tool, you probably already know everything about it, but if you don’t here are the specs.
Please email me at pierre@hotpixel.ch if interested.
I’ve picked a few images from my library to show what this camera can do in the areas of portrait/photojournalism, landscape, and low light.

I’m trying to do pictures that tell a story. But sometimes, the message is not obvious enough, so I’ll explain this one.
Burma is pretty much a rural country, its economy is mainly agriculture. It’s been torn for over 50 years of mismanagement and civil war.
But things are changing fast – the lady’s out, there’s a new “civilian” (…) government, the country is slowly opening up, western powers are pushing to get in.
Western influence starts to show up in remote areas, kids dress up differently and things like this, and to me this image represents the generation gap between rural farmers and their kids who most probably are going to live in a more westernized form of society and culture.
Whether that’s a good thing or not is anyone call, but I saw there are two worlds colliding in this image, and that’s why I shot it.
They say if you have to explain a joke, then it was a better idea to not crack it in the first place, but here you go